Travis 16 Drew 12 Dad 46
It is simply the best day of the year. You wake up at your leisure, take a stroll on the beach, hand-in-hand with your wife, cup of coffee in your other hand. The wind always blows in Florida in March, so as you walk south along the beach you lean into the south wind that blows your clothes tight against your body (and, more importantly, hers against hers). You sit for a few minutes, on some unpadded wooden beach chair they failed to lock up last night, watching the waves. You wander back about 9:30, in time to rouse the kids for the last of the free breakfast at the motel.
At the ball park by 11:00 for the 1:00 p.m. game – not the first ones there, by any means, but you have your pick of end parking spaces. The 75-year-old guy who sells you the $3 parking ticket from his nail apron has a face that looks like a relief map of the Everglades – and you know those eyes have watched a lot of baseball games. And he’s had at least one operating table experience that leads him to enjoy his day, working, even more than you are enjoying yours on vacation. As you lock the door, looking at the keys in your hand to make sure you don’t lock ’em in this unfamiliar rental car, you hear the first kee-rack of a bat smacking a baseball, and you have to consciously slow yourself to the pace of the others, kinda skipping along sideways, still wanting to be with your troupe, but pulled by the sounds, back to your youth. The pine needles underfoot look so right, and you wonder, are there no pine trees in Austin? You merge into a small stream of folks walking up the path to the ticket office – most are overweight, all are dressed more informally than you – faded Dodgers t-shirts, tucked in, and fresher “Fear This” t-shirts, aflap. An oddly high percentage of the folks, it seems to you, are smoking. Speaking of smoke, there’s a waft of sausage on the grill, but the industrial-strength Sterno equivalent quickly overrides. Four tickets, first base side (more right-handed batters, more foul balls to the right), row 12, on the aisle. The lady in the booth has those same fake pearl earbobs your grandmother wore. And she looks you right in the eye as she says, “Enjoy the game, Hon.”
By now the boys are leading you — through the turnstile, where the parking-ticket seller’s twin brother (surely) rips your tickets in half, notices the boys’ gloves (yours is inadvertently hidden, tucked into your belt, in back) and asks, “Gonna getcha a ball?” Then he volunteers one piece of local lore about getting autographs: “Ya know, if you stand right at the corner of the fence, down the right-field line, Mondesi often stops and signs there for a few minutes before stretching.” You emerge into the sun, and as you look back at your wife she’s already reaching down into the bag for the SPF30. You find your seats right away, but it’s still 90 minutes before the first pitch, so the boys take off to the back fields, where the minor leaguers are finishing a morning game. “Here – take your ticket stubs and don’t lose ’em. We’ll meet you here at game time.” At that you just leave the bag in the seats (well, grab the camera), and you and your wife take your books and go back outside, looking for one of those pine trees. You sit down and start to read, but after one page the kee-racks win, and you tell your wife you’ll meet her at the seats later. As you approach the back fields a ball from Lord knows where thwacks the asphalt 10 yards ahead, and you take just one, leisurely step sideways to barehand it, look around curiously, and pop it in your pocket. It was a BP dinger, from that field over there. One more and you’ll have one for each boy. You take your place along the low fence, sun in your face, the young uniformed men’s spikes now scritch-scritching along the asphalt path behind you, over to the big field – each player a languorous shark with a school of small remora flitting around him, handing him balls and pens which he accepts without looking at them, as he and a like-sized buddy in shorts and a t-shirt (an old high school teammate?) talk eye-to-eye above the heads of the swirling remora. Someone yells “Heads!” and you turn in time to snag a foul pop (you had put your glove on after the first near-miss). That’s one for the second boy. But some little eight-year-old says, “Awww,” and you realize you’ve caught it just above his glove. So you say, “Here ya go,” certain now that foul balls in Florida in March aren’t the precious commodity they are in the Astrodome in August.
As game time approaches you hit the concession stand for two dogs and two beers, plus a bag of peanuts that you just stuff down in your pocket, and meet your bride back at the seats. The boys are there. “Guess what, Dad! Kevin Brown signed my glove!” “Cool.” “Yeah, and there was some old guy, named Kofox or something, who was signing, but it was too crowded so we went and got Brown.” “Son, we need to talk.”
The game is almost an afterthought. The oldest men and the youngest boys root and seem to care, but most people are just leaning back – this is practice for us all. “Hey, Ump. Which game ’r you watchin’?” “Hey Blue — you’re missin’ a good game.” “Anybody got a rulebook in Braille?” By the fifth inning the starters are all out, except for the guy who was hurt all last season, and he’s still humpin’ it. You’re briefly surprised to see the pitchers, and the guys who have come out of the game, running arcing laps along the warning track, while the game goes on – they occasionally having to jump aside as a double bounces off the wall. Even the kids are ready to leave by the seventh, and you think that sounds about right. (Unless this is one of those games that you’ve negotiated with your wife to stay late, to enjoy that prime autograph-hunting post-game hour.)
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Here’s the deal. Around the first of the year, maybe mid-December, I start surfing the web for the (somewhat fluid) Spring Training schedules. I make a spreadsheet that shows which days, during the week of our Spring Break, each team plays each other. Then my boys and I (and, late in the process, my wife) sit down and start mapping out a route – you shoot for a circle, of course, so you don’t backtrack much, but it will all depend on your priorities. Our first year we maximized Braves’ games. Now that we have all the Braves’ autographs, that’s less important. In the Grapefruit League (in Florida, as opposed to the Cactus League in Arizona) there are 19 teams (I think; the White Sox just moved west this year). Their Spring Training sites describe a bit of a horseshoe shape, from Ft. Myers on the lower Gulf coast, up to Sarasota, Tampa, Bradenton, over to Kissimmee and Orlando (Astros, and the new Braves/Disney park), over to Melbourne on the east coast, down to Vero and as far south as Ft. Lauderdale. I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, when the Yankees used to train there, so it is quite explicitly a trip to my youth as well as to baseball and to Florida sunshine and surf. Here are some of the important points in our algorithm, as we build our annual plan:
• Cheryl likes the Marlins’ park in Viera (Melbourne), ’cause it’s pretty (turquoise, mostly).
• I really like the Indians’ park in Winter Haven, though we’re not going there this year, I don’t think. (We have a “Plan B” that would give us one game there.)
• Avoid “split squad” games, as they cut in half the chances of getting that one autograph you want.
• Be at the park at least two hours early, and plan to stay one hour after. The game itself is secondary to the less structured jostling that goes on before and after. Young men at the peak of their physicality romping in the sunshine. (But enough about me.)
• To accommodate those who may not be happy spending six hours at a ball park (go figure), we do three things: First, we rent a big, comfortable car, so Cheryl can read, nap, read, nap, then sashay into the ballpark around game time, have a hot doggy and a brew, and retire to the car to read some more whenever she wishes. Second, half the time we stay at a hotel/motel within walking distance of the park, so she can walk home, or we can walk to the park early, or whatever. (The other half of the time we stay at a cool place right on the beach.) Third, mom takes a day off whenever she wants to, so she can log some serious beach time.
• It is exceedingly hard to maintain one’s dignity while pursuing the autograph of someone half your age. So the boys go after autographs, and I’m the foul ball specialist. (I enjoy this self-serving grin at being perhaps the only 46-year-old Ph.D. to take his glove to the ball park.) Last year we came home with about 30 balls. The better ones we rotate into the “to be signed” pile. The scuffed ones go into our shag bag that we take to the Little League field here, to practice. Not too many kids out there hitting balls that say “Spring Training” or that have an interlocked “LA” scrawled on ’em.
• “This guy is worried about his dignity vis-à-vis getting autographs, but he has no compunction about body-blocking some 10-year-old out of the way to get a ball off the bat of Jose Lima”? Good point. And so, I have some “Rules for grown men who covet baseballs as much as the kids but don’t wish to make it that obvious.” First, maximize your personal space from others. Even if that spot over there seems a more likely place for the ball to be hit, stand over here by yourself so there’s less competition and so that . . . second, you never run after a ball. If there’s a ball equidistant between you and a kid, it’s the kid’s. Third: Most of these parks (all?) have a complex of other fields “out back” where all the minor leaguers are training at the same time. A little cleverness and a little luck (and a little old guy boldness – “You belong in here, right?” “Oh, yes.”) and you can walk around these fields and pick up baseballs like picking strawberries. (One year I noticed that the American Airlines luggage tags looked much like the press passes, and so I looped one over my belt. There is just about no place a grey-haired man with his shirt-tail tucked in cannot go at a Spring Training camp.)
It’s a great trip. This year Drew (our 11-year-old) said he looks forward to the Spring Training trip more than he looks forward to Christmas. We’re changing it up this year, adding a couple of days at the Lipton Tennis Tournament on Key Biscayne to our rotation. Trouble is, we couldn’t bear to reduce the number of baseball games, so we’re leaving two days early, making it an 11-day trip. Fly into Tampa (’cause the air fares are cheaper), drive the hour to Orlando, see a Braves game in the new park. Next day, drive to Vero to see Dodgertown. (There’s this cool place in Vero, the Vero Beach Disney Resort – all the Disney excellence and none of the mice.) Next day is either a free day or an hour drive up the coast to see the Marlins. Next day, another LA game. Next day, longish (3.5-hour) drive to Ft. Myers, ’cause Drew really wants to get Nomar Garciaparra’s autograph – so two Bosox games. Then over to Key Biscayne for tennis and bonefishing. Then up to see the Cardinals’ new stadium in Jupiter (and try to get McGwire’s autograph), then fly home from West Palm Beach.
The week is a sensual experience – the warm winds, the welcome humidity, the rustling of the palm fronds, the ubiquitous green. As others have written, it is a slower time. It is youth, springtime, sport, hero worship, collecting, playing, watching, family, history, and hope. Plus, it’s a trip that “keeps on giving,” as it colors the rest of the baseball season. We can say, “We saw him play in March and knew that he’d make it” (as we did with Jermaine Dye in 1996). We watch the regular season and the playoffs with an insider’s awareness, a sense of connectedness.
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Back beachside the ocean looks warmer than it is, but it is still warm enough for the kids. After a nap, you and your wife go for Walk on the Beach: The Sequel. This time with Chardonnay replacing the coffee. You arrive back in front of the motel just as it’s getting too dark for the boys to see the ball they’re tossing – their new Official National League ball with the asphalt scuff – reprising those diving catches they saw in today’s game, but in the forgiving sand. You change for dinner (“OK, you tell me when you intend to take your next shower”) deciding to go to the restaurant that Vin Scully frequents, this according to one of the old-timers you met along the fence. Since it’s Florida, you both order seafood, and your young culinary adventurers opt for the chicken nuggets. Back at the motel by 10:00, the kids spread out on their bed all their booty from the day, the foul balls, the signed glove, the signed baseball cards. The kids haggle over which movie to rent just long enough for them to realize that they’re tireder than they are in need of entertainment, and they fall asleep. As does your wife, reading, half propped up in the bed. Leaving you, and your book, in the chair, under the floor lamp, to finish the wine and the day. And as you survey what this 15X15 room holds, and smile your little “I’m a lucky man” smile, you think, “Tomorrow we get to the park by 10:30.”
